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Sunday, April 25, 2010

SEO For Beginners - A Fast and Easy Overview of How SEO Works and Why it is Important

If you are just getting started with your online business one of the first and most important things you should be aware of is search engine optimization or "SEO" as it is commonly referred to on the Internet. Search engine optimization involves a number of steps that are necessary to ensure your business is found by your target audience and it will be the foundation upon which you build your online business.

There are certain words that Internet surfers use to find your product or service and one of your first and most important tasks is to find the words that people are using during their searches. This is known as keyword research and there are many keyword tools available online to help you find the right keywords.

The keywords you choose will be the foundation to all of your search engine optimization efforts. If you choose the wrong keywords it will be like trying to build your business on a faulty foundation. With that said, let's take a look at how SEO works with keywords and why it is important to the success of your online business.

Website and SEO

When you build your website search engine optimization will play a big role in where your website ranks in the search engine results. The better your ranking the more free traffic you will receive to your website. Search engines such as Google have a certain criteria for awarding high rankings to a website. The criteria are based on your search engine optimization efforts.

When you create the content for your website, the keywords you choose during keyword research are used throughout the content, in page titles, and in page descriptions. When the search engines review your web page they look at the keywords and then compare them to the content on the page. If everything lines up you will receive higher rankings.

Advertising

Any advertising campaigns than you run online such as pay per click advertising and other methods must include search engine optimization. When you write your ads the keywords you choose should be included in the advertisements so your target audience can locate them during their searches. Additionally, the keywords in the ad should match the content on the page where your visitors arrive after clicking on the advertisement.

Internet Content

Part of the strategy for driving traffic to your website is creating high quality content that is useful to your readers and posting it to article marketing sites, blogs, social media sites, and other sites where readers go to find information on a particular subject.

The content you create must contain the keywords that your prospects use in their searches if they are going to find your content. Generally a link back to your website or blog is included at the end of the content. If the content is high quality readers will want to learn more and click through to your website. 
Website Links

One of the SEO strategies that search engines emphasize is the incoming links that you have to your site. Links are the blue text that you click on to find out more information on a specific topic. The sites that link to yours should be relevant to your product or service and also contain high quality information that is useful to your visitors. The text on the links also should include keywords that your prospects use during their searches. The more quality inbound links you have the higher your ranking will be in the search engine results.

So as you can see search engine optimization is very important if you are going to drive highly targeted traffic to your website that will be interested in your product or service. Investing the time at the beginning will come back to you tenfold in the future.

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